CASE STUDY: Saint Laurent Puppy Love

Our cute fur ball pets have an innate appreciation for us but maybe not our cherished material goods. Our client bought us her brand new and freshly chewed Saint Laurent shoulder bag that her adorable puppy had managed to devour in a far shorter time than she’d had to enjoy it. She had owned this iconic bag less than a few weeks and was enjoying that glowing feeling you get from a new purchase, that we all know too well, before the puppy crime was committed. On arrival we could see the state of the bag was rather dismal.

ANALYSING THE DAMAGE

The Restory’s aim is to offer the best quality repair, so when we analyse a new project we have to consider all factors. For the Saint Laurent bag there were significant structural damages on three panels: the front, the side gusset and the base. These make up the main part of the bag, making it vital to the design. Although it would be great to fully replace these panels altogether, there were multiple reasons to find an alternative path. Firstly, it would be an extensive job that would make the costs rocket sky-high; and secondly, we could not source the exact same leather. We see this often with designer pieces; the leather has been custom created with a unique texture, especially for the brand. The conclusion was to re-imagine the bag with some artisanal skill from our Atelier, instead of offering a mediocre match that would not do the bag justice.

Masking tape has been added to the bag to give a clear idea of where the new feature will be added.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

The Restory provided three potential solutions to present to the client and discuss. The first suggestion was to create a panel on both sides of the bag in a style that would disguise, and partially hide, the damage and make it more discrete. The other was to make a rather clever feature of the repaired panels that would draw the eye away from the other imperfect areas and the third had more detailing and a different finish to the second design but would cover the same area. Our restoration ideas are always in keeping with our work ethic: we like to challenge ourselves to make a repair “disappear” from a piece by re-thinking a design and adding an aspect that is a well considered fit that will help to hold its value despite the wars it may have been in.

option 1

option 2

option 3

THE PATH

The client chose the one-sided diagonal panel design with gold leather detail running between the black layers. Sourcing the gold leather from Italy meant we were able to find the perfect matching shade. The leather was then split to reach the ideal thickness that would ensure a professional repair by removing any extra bulk that might cause the design solution to look badly executed.

Re-creating the texture & visuals of the original leather

Re-edging the bag

Our client had chosen to invest in a solution that brought a unique one-off look and meant the beloved Saint Lauren